Abstract
AbstractThis study examines the affirmativesyes, yeaandayin Early Modern English, more specifically in the period 1560 to 1760. Affirmatives have an obvious role as responses to yes/no questions in dialogues, and so this study demanded the kind of dialogical material provided by theCorpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760. I examine the meanings and contexts of usage of each affirmative: their distribution across time and text-types, their collocates and their occurrence after positive and negative questions. The results challenge a number of issues and claims in the literature, including when the “Germanic pattern” (involvingyesandyeaafter positive or negative questions) dissolved, whetheryeaoraywere dialectal, and the timing of the rise ofayand the fall ofyea.
Highlights
In present-day English, the item yes is considered to be a “response form”, and is strongly associated with yes/no questions (Biber et al 1999: 1089–1090)
An important pattern of usage to consider – the so-called “Germanic pattern” – is one that was well-established in Old English (OE), namely, that yea was used as a positive response to positive questions, whereas yes was used as a positive response to negative ones
The first step in this study was to retrieve all variants for yes, yea and ay given in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED Online) for the period covered by the Corpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760 (CED)
Summary
In present-day English, the item yes is considered to be a “response form”, and is strongly associated with yes/no questions (Biber et al 1999: 1089–1090). This was broadly true for earlier stages of the English language (e.g., Wallage and van der Wurff 2013). An important pattern of usage to consider – the so-called “Germanic pattern” – is one that was well-established in Old English (OE), namely, that yea was used as a positive response to positive questions, whereas yes was used as a positive response to negative ones. Was this pattern evident in Early Modern English (EModE)? Was this pattern evident in Early Modern English (EModE)? This paper will reveal the meanings, linguistic patterns of usage and contexts of EModE affirmatives
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